GuideStar Blog

Sometimes, a blog editor has to state the obvious: combining organizations takes a tremendous amount of work. Since Foundation Center and GuideStar joined forces last February, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes. Tomorrow you’ll see some of the fruits of these labors when we launch a new candid.org. As part of that launch, we’re retiring the GuideStar Blog and replacing it with a new one, the Candid Blog.

If you manage a nonprofit organization’s Facebook page, there are almost certainly days when you feel frustrated and overwhelmed. I hear you, I see you—and I have some tips and strategies for making your work both easier and more impactful. 

When we started teaching our “how to” anniversaries workshop many years ago, we quickly realized that most organizations could use support well in advance of their anniversary year. If there is one key in running a successful anniversary campaign it’s that you should start early.

Too often organizations set goals for team members without realizing the developmental potential this practice has. A good barometer for how an organization thinks of goals can be found in the goal-review process. Do you leave a goals review feeling reinforced and reinvigorated with what you’ve accomplished and have before you, or is reviewing your goals somewhere between the Inquisition and being called to the principal’s office? Writing goals is an immensely powerful process that can help you accomplish amazing things, but you may have to help your organization appreciate the value of the process. Here are some tips that may help.

Often in negotiations, we rely on our intuition. However, there are tangible skills that can move our negotiating skills beyond intuition and into the realm of strategic negotiation. Here are six questions you can ask yourself to protect yourself against becoming overly influenced by your own feelings as well as leveraging empathy, data, outside resources, and your prior experiences as assets in the negotiation. 

You’d be hard-pressed to find an industry that hasn’t felt the positive effects of digital transformation in today’s business landscape. Innovative technology like cloud computing is becoming more widespread and more accessible, bringing its well-documented benefits to organizations of all shapes and sizes.

The advantages of implementing cloud tech as reported by the nonprofit sector include increased donations and improved productivity—and yet many charities have been be slow to adapt. In fact, NetChange’s survey of technology use by nonprofits found that just 11 percent of organizations rated their digital strategies as “highly effective.”

From the Green New Deal to a 70 percent top tax rate, the 116th Congress is discussing policies with far-reaching potential. But what about reforms from more than a decade ago? New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business uses GuideStar data to explore the unintended consequences for nonprofits of corporate finance reform put in place in 2002.

Year after year for the past decade, donor-retention rates have been sinking. Today they’re at an all-time low.

As more and more donors abandon ship, the cost of replacing them has grown so great as to be no longer affordable for most nonprofits.

It doesn’t have to be this way, as I show in my book Retention Fundraising. In those pages I outline a proven process for increasing donor retention.

Here I’ll touch on seven factors important for keeping your donors giving year after year.

A quick guide for nonprofits on how to create awareness, build buzz, and gain credibility through storytelling

Every nonprofit has an incredible story worth telling. Nonprofits work to lift up our communities and create much needed resources and opportunities for those in need. And, in order to get the support and donations you need to continue to do great work, it’s essential for you to share that impact with the world.

As we launch a new and improved Demographics section of the Nonprofit Profiles on GuideStar, I’m having a very familiar feeling.